Beginning at the beginning, this is a photo of the Boeing 747-400 aircraft that would be carrying me to Beijing. The photo doesn't do it justice -- this thing is enormous. The 747-400 has a larger second storey (yes, it is a two-storey

Here's another shot of the Air China 747 jet. The people in the foreground should give you some sense of scale.

Yours truly, aboard the 747. Coach seats on this aircraft are slightly larger, but not much, than standard U.S. airline coach seats. Business class seats are about the same as business class on other airlines. I was booked for business

....I ended up here. It's not Air Force One, but it's as close as I'll ever get! There were a lot of flight attendants, all female of course. They spoke English to varying degrees, and I had a nice conversation with one lady during

This shot shows more of the cabin. The unoccupied seat closest to the center was mine (seat 2B), but the window seat was unoccupied so I took that instead.

The photo isn't very clear due to haze (and I even digitally enhanced it), but this is the view from the aircraft flying north from LA along the coast of California. I expected us to turn west fairly quickly,

At the gift shop, you can have a personal chop made from carved jade while you wait.

This is a photo from the state-run plant that produces cultured freshwater pearls. This is the only picture from that part of the tour, because, frankly, it was mostly a shopping opportunity and a fairly contrived one at that. It was kind of interesting to learn that the

Say "Ni hou!" to Feng Ling, the young technician from the Kempinski Hotel who installs Internet for guests. She is an avid student of English, and being that she and I are both Internet geeks, we had a

Feng Ling's name is pronounced "Fung Ling" with a rising tonal on "Fung" and a falling tonal on Ling. "Ling" is her family name and "Feng" is her given name. Before I left China, I presented Feng Ling and her husband